Irma cuts power to 6.4 million, shuts ports, imperils crops

Debris lines a street in Naples, Fla., in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, Monday, Sept. 11, 2017. Florida Gov. Rick Scott said there's damage across the state caused by Hurricane Irma and it's still too dangerous for residents to go outside or return from evacuation. (AP Photo/Robert Ray)

(Bloomberg) -- Hurricane Irma has knocked out power to at least 6.4 million customers, paralyzed tanker traffic, shuttered gasoline stations and suppressed demand for natural gas.

As the storm headed up Florida’s west coast, it also threatened more than $1 billion worth of crops.

Power challenges

NextEra Energy Inc.’s Florida Power & Light utility warned Sunday that some customers may go without power for weeks, and parts of its system may need to be rebuilt “from the ground up.”

NextEra took two reactors offline at a nuclear plant south of Miami, one for reasons unrelated to the storm. Ports critical to supplying the state with gasoline and diesel were also closed, and energy companies including Exxon Mobil Corp. and Kinder Morgan Inc. shut fuel terminals and pipelines.

“Fuel deliveries in Florida are virtually nonexistent,” Mansfield Oil, a Georgia-based energy supplier, said in a report. “Markets will take time to fully recover, particularly if Irma damages fueling infrastructure.”

Irma weakened into a tropical storm as it moved over northern Florida and Georgia. It has sapped natural gas demand by cutting use from power plants, and may also wreak havoc on Florida’s farmlands, menacing $1.2 billion worth of production in the top U.S. grower of tomatoes, oranges, green beans, cucumbers, squash and sugar cane.

Florida’s orange, grapefruit and other citrus trees are full of developing fruit that Irma may blow away. Winds could also destroy the trees themselves in a region that accounts for almost 10% of the nation’s fruit and vegetable farmland. Orange-juice futures fell Monday after rallying last week ahead of the storm.

Ports closed, fuel challenges

Meanwhile, ports and terminals including Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Port Everglades, Jacksonville and Charleston, South Carolina, were closed to traffic. Florida, which depends wholly on pipelines and tankers for fuel supplies, was already facing fuel challenges after Hurricane Harvey knocked offline refining capacity in the Gulf Coast.

Kinder Morgan shut a pipeline system that carries gasoline, ethanol, diesel and jet fuel to land-locked Orlando from Tampa; all of its fuel terminals in Florida; and the Elba Island liquefied natural gas plant in Georgia.

Demand for gas to fuel power plants in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina dropped to about 3.77 billion cubic feet Sunday, the lowest in data going back to 2014, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Complexity of restoring electricity

Florida Power & Light said in a press conference broadcast online Sunday that restoring electricity will be “one of the most complex” endeavors the utility’s ever faced. The feed to the broadcast itself cut out for several minutes due to a power failure.